


what i used to like about you

by malapeanut



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Break Up, Falling In Love, M/M, Sad, just two queer kids falling out of love, this is the first time i am writing anything in years so please be nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapeanut/pseuds/malapeanut
Summary: The first time Jisung realized what he used to like about Minho was when he didn’t smell the same. Minho used to smell like vanilla, soft sweat, and a home Jisung had yet to call his. Now when he lay next to him, he smelled like sweat, long days, and nothing at all. When Jising realized it, he cried hours later.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Kudos: 16





	what i used to like about you

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y’all. I used to write years ago, but stopped for a lot of reasons, eventually getting rid of everything I ever wrote. I recently started converting some of my short creative fiction into stuff like this and figured I would post it.

The first time Jisung realized what he used to like about Minho was when he didn’t smell the same. Minho used to smell like vanilla, soft sweat, and a home Jisung had yet to call his. Now when he lay next to him, he smelled like sweat, long days, and nothing at all. When Jising realized it, he cried hours later. 

It was a colder spring day, that time of the year in the midwest where you are unsure if you need to keep wearing your winter jacket. They were curled up on Jisung’s couch together, feeling suffocated and hot in the way that one feels when they want to leave. They would watch tv together ever since the beginning. Today it felt like it was all there was left to do. Jisung wanted to be alone. He had so much to do alone, so much to do without Minho. Yet he was here, his arms around him, and it felt like this was what they were supposed to be doing because it was what they had always done before. 

It felt so strange to feel suffocated by the only person he was allowed to feel free with. And maybe, Jisung thought, Minho felt the same way. All these feelings of queer love and lust and the way they merely existing was only the same when they were with each other. Who else did they know who could understand what it meant to love someone when they were stuck here as a queer kid with barely a vision for their future? It wasn’t supposed to feel suffocating. It was supposed to feel like everything was out in the open air, waiting to be strung into a story where they got out of here, together. He began to understand that he would be getting out of this town alone, if he would be getting out at all. 

He was only seventeen but the trauma of queerness had caught up to anyone like him at that age. If it wasn’t Minho, then who would it be? Jisung wasn’t anyone to be lusted over. They were all dry skin, skinny arms, and wild hair. Love and lust doesn’t find him easy in this place. And the piece he was holding onto had finally faded. Being queer in a small place felt like there was only one person left to love you. What happened when you no longer loved him? 

Minho wasn’t beautiful in any specific way. Dark hair, dark eyes, skinny in the way someone is at 18 when they are hungry a lot. Perhaps, he was just enough to catch the attention of someone who needs comfort in someone with a similar experience. He was enough to catch Jisung’s attention because he was queer and there, stuck in the middle of nowhere with every other kid who knew what it was to feel stuck. 

Holding hands with Minho at first felt like fire in the dark pit of Jisung’s stomach. There were hundreds of layers waiting to be unfolded and explored. It was all secret brushes of skin against skin and never time to be alone. It was kissing each other for the first time. It was hands in places they had never been before when they knew they might get caught. 

They both were kids of the internet. Late night DMs were more common than their own voices. Words over messages were bolder and more sure. Being understood by another person so deeply was new. It was comforting more than anything. There were no questions of identity. Being queer was a given and it was normal with him. Minho was destined to be his best friend and his lover. Yet maybe queerness was all that really held them together. 

It’s easy to manipulate and be manipulated when Minho’s at his fingertips each moment of every day. Truthful words become fewer and fewer. Text messages become a dumping ground for everything he ever thinks, especially the bad. There is nowhere where he is just themself. He is always there and Minho is always there with him. 

The promise of lust fulfilled may have kept Jisung there. They experienced many firsts together. Many hushed kisses and new feelings. It was all mouths on necks and hands in jeans. All of it was a product of being seventeen and always wanting. Jisung would be lying if he said he didn’t care about losing that. 

He knew he once liked something about Minho, but he began to wonder what that had been. He was so convenient, but that couldn’t have been enough in the first place. He was funny, but no more than their other friends. He was pretty, but not in a way that stood out anymore. He was smart, but not any smarter than Jisung. He was there. And Jisung began to realize that may have been it. What Jisung liked was what he used to like about Minho.

Before they ever had one last kiss, one last hug, one last time alone, Jisung walked to a neutral place and told him it was over. It felt right and he knew it was. He would miss having a best friend, having sex with someone he knew so well, having someone there to cry to, but he would get over it. He didn’t cry then. He barely felt anything. He began to be alone with himself. 

Years later, Jisung would occasionally think back on the relationship. Not wanting, just wondering. He was miles away in a place where he was fulfilled and changed. He remembered a text he got from Minho a month after the breakup. 

Tell me what you used to like about me. 

The way you smelled like vanilla, soft sweat, and a home I had yet to call mine. The way you held my shaking and sweating hand the first time we knew it was more than friendship. The way you kissed my neck with teenage lust like we would be caught at any moment. The way you were there at any moment, at my fingertips, ready to tell me how much you loved to call me yours. The way you showed me that love doesn’t have to be the way we were told it has to be. The way you let me be queer because you were, too. That’s what I used to like about you, what I wish I still liked about you.


End file.
